Hambone wrote:sj-roc wrote:I started going to games regularly in July 1996, which is when I moved here. That's right, I moved here just in time to watch the Lengthy Era of Massive Suck (LEMS) unfold, after the relative stability of the brief (three year) Comrie era. Ever since then, I've attended every non-preseason game but one (which I was unavoidably out of town for in 1997), so with my vivid memories of the LEMS years, right now I don't see attendance to be quite as huge an issue as some folks (esp in the media at times) make it out to be. Could it be better? Sure. But it's not on the market to slavishly attend games out of some supposed moral or civic duty. It's on the team to provide the market with a convincing value proposition, and right now, that VP isn't up to the standard of the Ackles era.
Let's not forget the LEMS, as you put it, period was not a BC only phenomenen. Outside of perhaps Alberta it was the bleakest era for the entire league. I recall flying back from the 1996 Grey Cup in Hamilton thinking my Grey Cup streak would end at 14 because the one I just watched would be the last Grey Cup. I honestly wasn't sure the league would survive to play another 1997 season. In BC 1996 marked the brief ownership tenure of Nelson Skalbania. The instant it was announced he was taking over the team you could hear the footsteps of ticketholders fleeing the ship. 1996 was Year 1 after the US experiment. Baltimore moved to Montreal consistently playing before crowds of less than 10000. Ottawa would fold after 1996.
This article from the Toronto Star underscores just how bad the financial footing of the league was in those days.
Grey Cup Memories: Former CFL commissioner John Tory recalls trembling stands, terrifying players
In 1995 with the title game in windy Regina for the first time, the league risked major egg on its face with the looming prospect of having to turn away fans whose seats were in the temporary stands erected specifically for the event (and presumably on the cheap). The league's insurance policy on those stands did not cover wind conditions above 50 km/h, and league officials had to watch and wait nervously as morning winds of 56 km/h dipped mercifully to 48 km/h at the eleventh hour:
[The 1995 Grey Cup game] included an averted catastrophe that (then-league chairman John) Tory recalls fondly.
The game was in football-mad Regina, where tiny Taylor Field was hosting the championship match for the first time.
To win hosting rights, however, the city had to install temporary seating to the stadium, nearly doubling its capacity to some 53,000.
But game day opened with some ill winds.
“It was very windy and somebody from the league phoned me and said, ‘John, there’s just one problem,’” Tory recalls.
“I said, ‘What’s that?’ and he said, ‘Well, of course we had to get insurance for the temporary stands and the insurance provides specifically that you can’t have anyone sitting in those stands or use them if the wind is above 50 kilometres per hour.’”
The morning gusts were six kms stronger than that and so a worrisome day of wind watching ensued, with the possibility that paying fans would riot if they were told they couldn’t attend.
“I would have been very unpopular with a lot of people who bought those tickets ... but I would have said those stands can’t be used,” Tory says.
With a decision deadline of 2 p.m. being set, a stream of calls began to the local weather office to check on wind speeds.
“And we watched and watched . . . and the wind went down; 55, 54, 53, 52, 51,” Tory says. “And quite literally by decision time . . . it got down to 48. That’s the kind of near misses nobody ever really knew about.”
Then in the following year, with the Grey Cup game underway in Hamilton, the league realised only at that point there were insufficient funds in its bank account to cover players' Grey Cup game cheques, payable immediately after the game. Luckily some strings were pulled as Tim Hortons stepped in with a last minute bailout:
“It was the Snow Bowl in Hamilton,” Tory says of that Toronto Argonauts-Edmonton Eskimos classic in 1996, the year he added league commissioner to his CFL titles.
...
“Jeff Giles, who was at the time the very capable chief operating officer of the CFL ... comes to me and says, ‘John, there’s a problem.’ I said, ‘What’s the problem?’ ... and he says to me, ‘It would seem there’s not enough money in the CFL’s account to actually handle the cashing of the (Grey Cup bonus) cheques if the (players) all go to the bank tomorrow.’”
Bonus cheques of some $25,000 for each winning player and $15,000 for the losers had been made out. And because many of those players would scatter to the howling winds at game’s end, they had to be given their dough in the dressing rooms.
“I said, ‘You can’t assume they’re not going to go to the bank tomorrow’ and he (Giles) said, ‘What do you think we should do?’” Tory recalls.
“And he’s sort of laying out a number of choices to me, all of which involve me as the commissioner going to the locker rooms, at halftime or after the game, saying, ‘We’re not going to give you the cheques.’
“That didn’t seem like a good idea.”
The thought of going to locker rooms filled with athletic behemoths and telling them there would be no cheques, or that they couldn’t cash the ones they might be given, filled Tory with a fair amount of dread.
“I pictured me going into this dressing room with these large, very strong, very fit men who might just decide they’re going to wrestle me to the ground and take the small change out of my pocket.”
In the end, the day — and perhaps Tory’s hide — was saved when game sponsor Tim Hortons stepped in and guaranteed the cheques could go through.
That period was truly the league's LEMS years. Is it an exaggeration to say the Hollywood script-like nature of that 1996 title game — a shootout played in a steady snowfall with so many surreal moments: a highlight reel bobbled catch by Eddie Brown that went for a major score, special teams TDs from Gizmo and Jimmy the Jet, and the added intrigue of the controversial missed Flutie third down fumble — literally saved the league from extinction?
Sports can be a peculiar thing. When partaking in fiction, like a book or movie, we adopt a "Willing Suspension of Disbelief" for enjoyment's sake. There's a similar force at work in sports: "Willing Suspension of Rationality". If you doubt this, listen to any conversation between rival team fans. You even see it among fans of the same team. Fans argue over who's the better QB or goalie, and selectively cite stats that support their views while ignoring those that don't.
